News about Korean new media such as Internet and mobile tech but also on conventional media such as TV, radio, film and newspapers. Purpose of this blog is to function as reference material for a research project (2006-2009) on Korean media and new media, a part of the OED research group and funded by HS Foundation (see: Affiliations). Special thanks to research assistant Katja Heinonen who took care of the blog in 2007-2008.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Several years ago, two MIT graduate students conducted an experiment to restore data from 158 second-hand computer disk drives that they bought from online auctions. They were able to recover 5,000 credit card numbers, detailed medical records, personal emails and even corporate ledgers from 129 of the drives. Three drives contained the details of years' worth of banking transactions. A test by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology produced similar results, with all kinds of personal information like resident registration numbers pouring from second-hand computers.